On April 10-11, 2009 the coalition of NGO conducted working group meeting on discussion some articles of Draft Law “On Access to Public Information”. Top media experts on information regulations from Centre for Political and Legal Reforms, Institute on Mass Information, Media Law Institute, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group and Ukrainian National Journalists Union took part at the discussion.

The main goal of the meeting was taking the Draft Law into accordance to international democratic standards and harmonizing the Draft Law structure and terminology. During the discussion the special attention was given to the observation and commentary to the Draft Law prepared by ARTICLE 19.

There were proposed some amendments to the Draft Law concerning intensification the state officials’ responsibility for transgression the right on access to information. The participants emphasized the necessity of   bringing the activity of the state official to correspondence with the Law “On Access to Public Information” side by side with bringing administrative and/or criminal action against.

On June 12, 2009 the Parliament of Ukraine has approved the concept of the Draft Law on  Access to Public Information which have been developed with the active participated of the MLI.  Therefore the points mentioned during expert meeting most probably will be topics of conversation during the next discussion the Draft Law in Parliament.